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'Western states abuse Internet'
The Herald (Zimbabwe)
November 17, 2005

http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?id=48878&pubdate=2005-11-17

From Innocent Gore in TUNIS, Tunisia

ZIMBABWE is concerned that information communication technology (ICT) continues to be used negatively — mainly by developed countries — to undermine national sovereignty, social and cultural values, President Mugabe said here yesterday.

The President also challenged the still undemocratic issue of Internet governance, saying one or two countries insisted on being world policemen on the management and administration of the Internet, a worldwide network of computers which facilitates data transmission and exchange.

Cde Mugabe, who was addressing the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), said the summit should empower all countries in their development endeavours and engender confidence in Internet users outside Europe and North America by allowing for a more transparent and multilateral approach to Internet governance.

"Indeed, why should our diversified world be beholden to an American company for such a sensitive undertaking?" he asked.

Internet governance and financing of ICT development were some of the contentious issues left unresolved at the first phase of the WSIS in Geneva in 2003 and were expected to, once again, take centre stage at this summit.

The Internet was developed by an American company called Internet Corporation on Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the company managed it in consultation with the United States Department of Commerce.

Developing countries were proposing that this function be managed by an inter-governmental authority, but the US government was against such an arrangement as this would result in it losing control of the Internet and all revenue associated with the information superhighway.

African countries wanted the composition and role of the present governing body to be a fully representative authority and wanted to be accorded the opportunity to actively participate in international organisations dealing with Internet governance.

Most leaders from developing countries who addressed the summit, notably South African President Thabo Mbeki and Mozambican Prime Minister Luisa Diogo, said unless the issue of Internet governance was fully addressed, little progress would be made at the summit.

President Mugabe said the absence of clear funding mechanisms for the development of ICTs in the Third World threatened the very information society the summit was discussing since the utility of any communications network was its reach.

"Without clearly defined financing mechanisms to bridge the digital divide, the information society will not have a meaningful impact in many parts of the developing world.

"The West's resistance to the development of a specific financing mechanism for the Plan of Action may spell doom to all the positive things emerging from this process.

"Should we not suspect that the proposed mechanisms are perhaps being rejected because they are not part of the facilities managed by the Bretton-Woods institutions on the strength of the West's neo-colonial designs?"

The President said it was also surprising that developed countries continued to frustrate measures such as technology transfer and preferential trade terms that would further advance the information society.

"After praising the virtues of ICTs, it seems to us that the next step is to ensure that such technologies become widely available. These negative subterfuges have the capacity of weakening the WSIS process and stripping it of the action-oriented approach it had taken," he said.

Cde Mugabe also said the debate on ICTs should recognise that the post-Tunis period would still have the North-South divide that threatened the sustainability of the very gains of the World Summit on Information Society process.

It was imperative, he said, that greater efforts were undertaken to bridge the digital divide.

A supportive United Nations system and a well-designed and financed Plan of Action, as well as appropriate policies developed through the WSIS, would significantly move the process in the direction of bridging the divide.

President Mugabe also said with the advent of information technology, there was need to guard against crimes such as child pornography, computer hacking, electronic fraud and cyber-terrorism.

These shortcomings, he added, eroded the confidence that should be growing in the information society.

"Is it not ironic that because these technologies are getting more pervasive, those who have previously supported nihilistic and disorderly freedom of expression are now beginning to see the folly of their shortsightedness?

"Satellite broadcasting and the Internet now allow other views to be disseminated to a wider global audience, thereby challenging the bully boy mentality that drives the unipolar world," he said.

The Declaration of Principles agreed at the first phase of the summit in Geneva, the President noted, observed that where favourable conditions existed, information and communication technologies could be useful tools in generating economic growth and employment creation, increasing productivity and improving the quality of life of all people.

Regrettably, the huge potential for economic growth and poverty reduction in many developing countries, such as Zimbabwe, was stymied by lack of adequate information and communication technologies, thus marginalising the countries instead of integrating them into the world economy.

But on its part, Zimbabwe had embarked on a number of national activities aimed at enhancing its capacity to benefit from information communication technology.

Universities and other tertiary institutions were now largely connected in the national education management information system that also included access to the Internet.

With support from the corporate world, Cde Mugabe initiated the President's National Computerisation Programme which to date has seen about 500 mainly secondary schools across the country's 10 provinces getting computers and accessories.

"We are now working with the International Telecommunications Union to provide training to teachers even as we examine the possibilities of connecting the schools in the project on the Internet."

The President told the summit that Zimbabwe prided herself on a well-established rural electrification programme, which was opening new horizons for the use of ICTs in rural areas.

In addition to attracting greater investment into these areas, the technologies had the potential of bringing tele-medicine, distance education and telecommunications to previously remote areas, thereby enhancing the quality of life, Cde Mugabe said.

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